For businesses large and small, relying on a cloud-based collaboration and productivity suite such as Microsoft Office 365 is becoming the norm. Enhancing productivity in your organisation is vital to get ahead in 2017 - and using Office 365 can help, if it's used right...

The partnership will also see Microsoft integrate Salesforce services into Office 365. Microsoft's OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online will also be added as integrated storage options for Salesforce services. Finally the two companies announced plans to release a new Salesforce App for Outlook.

"We are excited to partner with salesforce.com and help customers thrive in a mobile and cloud-first world," said Nadella.

"Working together we'll deliver new solutions that connect the customer insights of Salesforce to the cloud productivity of Office 365, the cloud platform of Azure and the mobility of Windows, so our customers can do more."

Salesforce is the second big cloud services CRM provider to announce a partnership with Microsoft in recent weeks. Microsoft and SAP announced plans to work more closely when creating cloud computing, data access and mobile software earlier in May. The strategy will see a raft of SAP software accredited for Microsoft Azure.